Going for Gold: Pantheons

[Drakle]

That just makes a lot of patheons very samey, and is really unbalanced. 3 yeilds for working two farms on any spot is very powerful, and it is also 3 yields per city. It would make flood plain starts so broken.

 

[Stalker0]

So currently Goddess of the Home is one of my bottom tier pantheons, for a few reasons:

1) Happiness generates limits my growth early, so the food and growth bonuses are not as strong as they may look on paper.
2) I find the pantheon near impossible to found with. Even if I do nothing but build buildings (which normally is a very bad opener, you need workers, military units, and maybe a TR to get your infrastructure going) I find that the faith return tends to be extremely poor.
3) The pantheon offers me nothing really unique. The yields aren't great, shrine first is what I normally do in my satellite cities anyway if I want to found, the pantheon doesn't generate an interesting playstyle just generally a suboptimal one.

Do other people find good uses for Home? I really feel like this thing needs some happiness buffs to make the growth viable.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Agreed, it's too hard to use without another faith bonus (monopoly, UA, UI) and if I do have another faith bonus, I'd instead go for a pantheon that gives me more yields in the long run. But I see the AI often picking it and founding with it, and it's decent enough bonus if you get it mid/late game via spreading when you actually want your cities to grow as much as possible. So I'm kinda ok with/resigned to it being an AI pantheon, much like Ancestor Worship for example.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

So currently Goddess of the Home is one of my bottom tier pantheons, for a few reasons:

1) Happiness generates limits my growth early, so the food and growth bonuses are not as strong as they may look on paper.
2) I find the pantheon near impossible to found with. Even if I do nothing but build buildings (which normally is a very bad opener, you need workers, military units, and maybe a TR to get your infrastructure going) I find that the faith return tends to be extremely poor.
3) The pantheon offers me nothing really unique. The yields aren't great, shrine first is what I normally do in my satellite cities anyway if I want to found, the pantheon doesn't generate an interesting playstyle just generally a suboptimal one.

Do other people find good uses for Home? I really feel like this thing needs some happiness buffs to make the growth viable.

I agree it's a bit on the weaker side but I don't think it's impossible to found with even for a civ with no religious bonuses at all at least on emperor, i have not tried it on immortal yet but it has it's niche for production heavy/food light progress starts that would go left side of progress first for culture.

 

[Milae]

I actually have been considering using Home for Tradition instead of Beauty sometimes. Home will give around +2 faith per city which ain't bad, it's just that you need some use for the food for it to be useful.

I don't see how you would have any trouble founding with it if you build a few shrines.

 

[Forsti]

Is it intended for god of commerce to give yields to both cities if you send an internal trade route? 4 and 4 for each internal trade route feels quite strong, when you're already getting 2 and 2 for every city connection.

 

[Omen of Peace]

I find the Culture from God of the Stars and Sky to be unbalanced.
If you start in tundra, the beginning can be awful (sometimes you can't grow past pop 2 or 3...), but as soon as you get the pantheon, you get an instantaneous +3 / +4 culture (I often go Tradition in that case, for the added pop and quickly growing borders), with your 2nd city getting quickly from +1 to +2 then +3 culture - all the while getting quite a bit of easy faith. With the current beta where you can fairly easily get Pyramids, that 2nd city comes early, too.
That lets me rocket ahead in the early game (it's more culture than the Netherlands, early on!).

I would suggest giving +1 culture per city, attached to one of the usual buildings (e.g. monument). As an additional benefit, it makes GoSaS slightly better when you have less tundra (but then you miss out on faith).

 

[Rean]

So currently Goddess of the Home is one of my bottom tier pantheons, for a few reasons:

1) Happiness generates limits my growth early, so the food and growth bonuses are not as strong as they may look on paper.
2) I find the pantheon near impossible to found with. Even if I do nothing but build buildings (which normally is a very bad opener, you need workers, military units, and maybe a TR to get your infrastructure going) I find that the faith return tends to be extremely poor.
3) The pantheon offers me nothing really unique. The yields aren't great, shrine first is what I normally do in my satellite cities anyway if I want to found, the pantheon doesn't generate an interesting playstyle just generally a suboptimal one.

Do other people find good uses for Home? I really feel like this thing needs some happiness buffs to make the growth viable.

I've had a lot of success with Home, but it does want some extra source of faith (whether from your civ or incense monopoly or other sources) to found. The food is really good tho, the food per building adds up a lot throughout the game and the %growth rate can help a lot early on (assuming you've got a use for the extra citizens). Definitely a more situational pantheon (does have the advantage of not depending on certain resources/terrain types) but potentially very powerful.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Omen of Peace, I agree, that's why I manually changed the game file so the pantheon now gives 1 production instead of 1 culture, it makes it less OP.

 

[Legen]

I agree that God of Stars and Sky is unbalanced. The pantheon's main strength is that it doesn't need any improvement or building, making it a much faster pantheon than the rest. I don't think it is about yield choice, as Goddess of the Hunt is similar yield-wise, but not as strong.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I kind of disagree; yes, Stars and Sky pantheon is extremely good for both founding a religion and ... in fact the strongest pantheon boosting the very first few pops in a city but after that you have to deal with the atrocious tundra
To elaborate more, without improvements the base tundra tile yields 1 compared to 2 for grass land, 11 for plains, 3 for flood plains then the pantheon shows up.

• A flat tundra tile with a resource generates 2 points of yields without pantheon , 6 with pantheon.
• A tundra hill tile with a resource generates 3 points of yields, 7 with pantheon.
• Flood plains with resource generates 4 yields, 7 with desert pantheon.
• Flat desert with resource generates 1 yield point, 4 with pantheon.
• desert hill with a resource generates 3 yield points, 6 with desert pantheon.

of course not all yields are equal, the common consensus seems to be that culture is king but that's only one view of the scene; having to settle on the atrocious tundra you kind of trade mid game growth for early super tiles that will often force you into the habit of spending fortunes to buy these tiles ASAP since any tile without a resource are not worth working whether early or late.
Compared to other types of land where tiles without resources can be turned into useful tiles through river farm triangles.
Another point that's often neglected about settling tunrdra for those extra yields provided by the pantheon is the strategic draw backs of horizontal expansion which means an invitation for the AI to forward settle you, spreading too thin while exposing your cities to more AI players rather than forming a block of cities that are easier to defend and venerally more comfortable for logistic purposes.

 

[Stalker0]

I think it comes down to how I'm presented the Tundra in the first place.

For example, if I have to settle my capital in full Tundra....that is a terrible start, I am usually a good bit behind by the time I get my pantheon, so Stars just helps me get back in the game. But if you start on like the edge of tundra, can start a good capital and then expand into tundra under stars....that's pretty powerful.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

for Stars and Sky to be useful it requires commitment into tundra for a good while meaning all of your core expansions have to be on tundra to make it worth picking in the first place, there is no denying that it's incredibly helpful in the early 100 or so turns of the game but after that if you cannot use that temporary advantage to leverage your position you are left with a crappy infertile land with some above average tiles (due to how the value of these extra yields decay as the game progresses) and underpopulated cities for their era.

 

[Ranslee]

Stars and Sky is strong... in that it allows you to have a decent start in tundra, which is otherwise very lacking. It also requires you to have a decent amount of resources around, making it situational very much like Spirit of the Desert (with tundra having higher payoff because Tundra starts are worse).

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I don't normally involve myself with the pantheons discussion, but I can't help but point out how losing access to God of War is really deflating while planning an authority game: there's no legitimate plan B, let alone C. Considering how troublesome barbs are recently (and I'm only on King, yikes...), and the fact there's no pantheon specific to barbarians, maybe there's opportunity to fill a void.

@pineappledan I know Israel already somewhat plays off this, but do you think it'd be redundant to try and include a barb based pantheon into the base game / your modmod? It'd preferably be designed to not overlap/stack with the existing bonuses already received from barbarian interactions, though maybe some synergy would be welcome. It could even be helpful for aggressive Progress/Tradition civs in deterring barb heavy areas while seeking to establish early security surrounding their region. Also, it would balance well, with immediate impact that falls off after the early game once the majority of barbs have been dispersed. Thematically it could be fun as well; barbarism is literally the absence of civilization, and founding a religion could represent your primitive savages evolving from 'brute' tactics, into a new dawn.

God of Barbarism:

• Receive Faith when clearing Barbarian camps.
• Defeated Barbarians join your side while granting Faith, units steal yields (fixed) when attacking cities.

The first part is simplified for basic and consistent faith gain opportunity, and it compliments the gold + culture you'd already receive while playing authority. I think the second trait would be really fun and unique to play with, while utilizing two features already implemented in-game through other means (converting enemies a la the Huns / Sea Beggars, and stealing random yields like barbs do currently). God of War is pretty darn good while being straight to the point, but I think having a strong alternative like this would be a really solid addition.

 

[pineappledan]

There is already a fallback militaristic pantheon in the More Beliefs mod: God of Storms

 

[Kim Dong Un]

There is already a fallback militaristic pantheon in the More Beliefs mod: God of Storms

I'm aware of GoS, although I don't actually play with the beliefs modmod, but does a player still take that pantheon if not coastal? Is the pillaging aspect enough to carry itself? I'd assume so, it seems pretty strong; I might have to give it a whirl one time, to find out. Still though, I think the barb niche would be pretty cool so I figured I'd see if there was any interest.

I also forgot about "Warrior Monk"... I guess I will have to try this now.

 

[pineappledan]

(Pantheon) - God of Storms
2 in Cities with a Garrison.
Pillaging a tile provides 15Faith and Production. Does not scale with Era.

Warrior monks is a follower belief, not a pantheon

 

[Kim Dong Un]

(Pantheon) - God of Storms
2 in Cities with a Garrison.
Pillaging a tile provides 15Faith and Production. Does not scale with Era.

Warrior monks is a follower belief, not a pantheon

Apparently I can't read today.

Carry on.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

PDan, does this pantheon take effect when pillaging a road?